Princeton’s
Darrell
Guder
Calls for
a
Missional
Reorientation
Darrell
Guder,
Dean of
Academic
Affairs
and Henry
Winters
Luce
Professor
of
Missional
and
Ecumenical
Theology
at
Princeton
Theological
Seminary,
delivered
the 2007
Payton
Lectures
May 2 and
3 on the
topic
“Walking
Worthily:
Missional
Leadership
after
Christendom.”
Guder’s
lectures
centered
on the
concept
that the
Church
needs to
reclaim
its
missional
heritage
in order
to fulfil
its
purpose as
given by
Christ.
“Missional,”
Guder
explained,
“is
defined by
the
Church’s
calling or
sending
for all
the world,
to all the
world.”
Guder
maintained
that
during the
long
period of
time when
the Church
represented
a dominant
power
structure
in the
Western
world,
Christians
gradually
shifted
their
understanding
of the
Church
from being
an
outwardly
oriented
gathering
that
launched
mission to
being an
inwardly
oriented
gathering
that
maintained
believers.
In order
to be
effective
in the
world,
Guder
proposed
that
Christians
recapture
the
outwardly
oriented
definition
of the
Church,
which he
presented
as the
Scriptural
model. The
mission of
the
Church,
Guder
said, is
“not
saving
souls and
collecting
them into
communities,
but the
formation
of new
witnessing
communities.”
The
gathering
of the
Church,
while
still
essential,
is most
valuable
in terms
of
preparing
its people
to go out
into the
world and
be active.
This
recapturing
of
missional
identity
requires a
new set of
priorities
for
Christian
leadership
and for
the
training
of
Christian
leaders,
Guder
claimed.
These
priorities
include
(1)
emphasizing
the power
of the
Word of
God,
including
recognizing
the New
Testament
mandate
for the
Church to
be sent
into the
world; (2)
understanding
that
leadership
in
spreading
the gospel
is
relational
and shared
rather
than
hierarchical;
and (3)
recognizing
the
personal
nature of
each
Christian’s
call to
share
Christ in
their
daily
life.
Guder
maintained
that by
embracing
these
priorities,
the Church
will both
align
itself
more
closely
with the
mission
Jesus set
for it,
and offer
a more
relevant
witness to
the gospel
in
contemporary
culture.
Guder, an
ordained
minister
in the
Presbyterian
Church
(USA), is
widely
recognized
for his
writing
and
teaching
on the
missional
church,
especially
the
theological
implications
of the
paradigm
shift to
post-Christendom.
He is
author of
The
Continuing
Conversion
of the
Church:
Evangelization
as the
Heart of
Ministry
and editor
of
Missional
Church: A
Vision for
the
Sending of
the Church
in North
America.
This
Article is
reproduced
courtesy
of the
Fuller
Theological
Seminary
all rights
reserved.
